Coarse Silk: Volume Four of Billy Day’s Story

She was a dreamer who wanted another person to make them real. Expecting my Dad to love her, carry her, cushion her from the unpleasantries of normal life she lacked the guts to confront. He couldn’t. Not then. Too many other things, real unpleasantries crowded his mind for attention. Why is that dreams cause so much trouble? I mean, they don’t exist in the world I live in, do they: or maybe they do in yours? They inhabit that stuff your skull protects, and even then only when you sleep, yet there was my Dad and my Mum, having glorious dreams of a love happy ever after life. A never ending something that turned sour when they awoke from their slumbering dreams. But they thought it was real enough to bring me into the world they imagined was forever. It never felt like that for me: honest. Did I have some foreboding, some sixth sense that life would go pear shaped and that Dad and me would be left to fend for ourselves? The old man didn’t, that’s for sure. And me: would you believe me if I admitted that even as a young kid I sensed life would be better? If you don’t, well, you don’t have to. No one has to believe anything, and if they have a better version of a belief, and if makes them happy, well, so be it. Their choice. But, by now, you’ve read something of my life threading through my three stories. Yeah, of course you have: doesn’t mean I’ve admitted all the truths, does it? Nah, of course not. Why should I reveal the inner most stuff that makes me tick? I’m dead sure the old man hasn’t revealed to me the full works about his life. You know, the awful time in his kids home – now, that’s a sack full of deceit – more like the nick. Yeah, he’s been there too, and the other nick: his army days. He did enjoy it, but look at the mess it got him in.